I recently heard a talk by the distinguished playwright, Ken Ludwig. He was speaking about his forthcoming book, Teaching Shakespeare to Children. Later, I heard that children often react with delight and interest to Shakespeare’s language. Then, yesterday, a friend told a related story about her children. While she was reading Shakespeare to her 10 year old, her 5-year-old child commented on how beautiful the words were.

My wife speculates that young children are always hearing and processing language they don’t fully understand, so Shakespeare is not so different from everything else they hear—only much more “beautiful.” And what precociously profound literary critics they are!

So we clearly need to keep teaching Shakespeare in schools. But maybe we need to begin much earlier.